David Jeffrey: 9.10.90, 1990

David Jeffrey has described his work as an effort to develop a vocabulary that exploits the essential, inherent qualities of a variety of media and materials.¹ This is a goal consistent with the modernist practice of allowing materials to dictate what would otherwise be seen as subjective and arbitrary decisions—a practice Jeffrey both adopts and subverts. In works derived from the characteristics of their materials there is often an aura of permanence and anonymous distance; in Jeffrey’s, however, a sense of the ephemeral and the personal touch of craft return with the force of the long suppressed.

In the early nineties, Jeffrey explored the characteristics of charcoal. He found that, when pulverized, it “could convey a range of possibilities from a fine vaporous mist to a heavy, earth-like mass.”² Both effects are central to 9.10.90. Its weave of horizontals and verticals is tight and dense, creating the impression of a massive hanging surface whose weight pulls it down—a pull halted only by the darker, more solid patch of diagonals at the bottom, which seems to act as a barrier. At the same time, however, a light mist of charcoal extends across the drawing and fills the gaps in warp and weft. This mist bleeds the grid pattern and rectangular frame and threatens to dissolve them, an effect particularly visible by contrast with the two spots bare of gray powder. The drawing becomes the battleground on which the solidity of pressed charcoal is pitted against the evanescence of charcoal particles. The modernist quest for the essence of material thus exposes contradictory characteristics.

Jeffrey explores the essence of his medium not only with respect to the charcoal, but also with respect to the shape of the paper support. Here again, he turns modernism inside out. A rectangular sheet of paper, so goes the modernist logic, lends itself to the grid. At its best, the grid is modular, with the size of each module proportional to the size of the paper. By deriving the depicted shapes from the shape of the paper, the artist eliminates subjective and arbitrary choice.